Democrats cry ‘carpetbagger’ at Senate GOP candidates

The campaign

Democrats highlight GOP Senate candidates’ out-of-state ties

Senate Democrats think they’ve found a major weakness in five battleground races that will decide control of the Senate: Out-of-state carpetbaggers. 

Republicans, led by Sen. Steve Daines (Mont.), the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee chair, have recruited wealthy candidates in Wisconsin, Montana, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada who are expected to contribute millions — and potentially tens of millions — to their own campaigns.

Self-funders are a huge attraction for Republicans, who are often outraised and outspent by their Democratic challengers. These wealthy candidates often own multiple homes, multiple businesses and the means to live wherever they’d like — including out of state. And Democrats are ready to pounce. 

In Wisconsin

The first campaign ad released last week by Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Senate Democrats, calls Republican challenger Eric Hovde “pure California.” 

“On Wisconsin’s side? Don’t bank on it,” the narrator says of Hovde, a Wisconsin real estate developer and California bank owner who runs H Bancorp and owns a $7 million home in Laguna Beach. 

Hovde could spend as much as $20 million of his own money in his race against two-term incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin in what could be the most competitive Senate race in the country. 

Hovde was born and raised in Wisconsin. But for much of his adult life, he’s lived outside of the state, including spending 24 years in Washington, D.C. The day after he announced his candidacy, the Wisconsin Democratic Party bought a Cameo message from actors on “The Real Housewives of Orange County” wishing their “neighbor” good luck in his new job. 

Hovde has faced these attacks before. He moved back to the state in 2011 for his first Senate run and was attacked by his Republican primary challengers for being an out-of-stater. 

But Hovde says that he has spent more than six months in the state each year since 2011 and that his daughter graduated from a Madison high school in 2017. In his first ad introducing himself to voters, Hovde’s wife speaks directly to the camera and says he’s a fourth-generation Wisconsinite.

Mike Berg, NRSC communications director, charged Baldwin with spending significant time at her “penthouse” in D.C. 

In Montana

Democrats plan to hammer the issue in Pennsylvania and Montana, too. 

In Montana: Republican Tim Sheehy, who is running against third-generation dirt farmer Sen. Jon Tester in one of Democrats’ toughest holds of the cycle, is facing attacks from Democrats that he is one of the wealthy out-of-staters moving to Montana, creating congestion and driving up property costs. 

“Wealthy outsiders are changing our state, driving up the cost of housing,” a sixth-generation Montana rancher says in a Tester ad. 

Sheehy is an ex-Navy SEAL from Minnesota who visited Montana as a child and would do training runs there while in the military. He and his wife moved to Montana after he left the Navy a decade ago and opened Bridger Aerospace, a successful aerial firefighting company. He has three homes there, including on Flathead Lake and in Big Sky, leading Democrats to call him “Transplant Tim.”

Sheehy, who raked in $7 million in income last year according to his Senate finance disclosures, plans to invest some of his own money in the contest.

“While Jon Tester got six times richer and became a multimillionaire as a career politician hobnobbing with lobbyists in D.C. for nearly two decades, Tim Sheehy was fighting terrorists in the Middle East, creating hundreds of Montana jobs, and growing a beautiful family with four young kids in Montana,” a Sheehy spokesperson said.

In Pennsylvania

The Democratic Party refers to Republican Dave McCormick as “Connecticut resident Dave McCormick.” He is running against Sen. Bob Casey, whose family has a long history in Pennsylvania politics. 

McCormick grew up in Pennsylvania but left off and on in his career to serve in the military and to work in the George W. Bush administration. He spends a lot of time at his home in Connecticut, where he ran the hedge fund company Bridgewater Associates. He bought a home in Pittsburgh and regularly flies a private jet service from Connecticut to Pennsylvania, where he has been campaigning, including one on Friday. “So I do go to Connecticut to see my daughter. That’s a part of being a good dad, and I’m going to continue to do that,” he told local news station WJAC last month. 

In Nevada

Sam Brown is Republicans’ preferred candidate to run against Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen. He ran for a U.S. House seat in Texas in 2014 and moved in 2018 to Nevada, where he ran for Senate in 2022. Club for Growth Action aired an ad in Brown’s primary saying, “It will literally take an act of God to get me out of Texas.”

The carpetbagger attacks on Brown, however, might not carry as much weight in Nevada, a transient state where incumbent senators run like first-time candidates because as many as 50 percent of voters will have moved to the state during their six-year term. But Democrats say his elections in two states show that he’s a career politician who doesn’t understand Nevada.

It goes both ways

Republicans note that the carpetbagger attack can hurt Democrats, too. 

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who is running for the open Senate seat in Michigan, didn’t live in the state when she left for college until she ran for Congress in 2017. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is running for the open Senate seat in Arizona, listed his D.C. home as his primary residence and makes money by renting out his home in Arizona. 

An effective attack

Accusing candidates of carpetbagging is an attack as old as time. And it's often effective. 

• In Pennsylvania last cycle, McCormick and Mehmet Oz both faced attacks about living in Connecticut and New Jersey, respectively. 
• In Georgia, Republican Herschel Walker was living in Texas when he announced his Senate run. 
• In 2018, Montana Republican Matt Rosendale was given the nickname “Maryland Matt,” and West Virginia Republican Patrick Morrisey was knocked for being from New Jersey. 
• In 2014, Scott Brown, who lost his Senate seat in 2012 in Massachusetts, moved to neighboring New Hampshire to try to return to the Senate. It didn't work. 
• In 2012, Republican Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana was defeated in his primary after a stream of attacks that he no longer lived in the state he represented. 

Perhaps the most successful carpetbaggers are Hillary Clinton, who moved to New York while her husband, Bill Clinton, was still president and won the state’s open Senate seat in 2000, and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who chose Utah as his primary place of residence to win a Senate seat in 2018. 

What we're watching

On the Trail

Former President Donald Trump is expected to officially clinch the Republican presidential nomination today after four more GOP primaries in Georgia, Mississippi, Washington and Hawaii. 

On the Hill

OMB Director Shalanda Young will testify before the Senate Budget Committee about President Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget request. 

“Biden would have Congress offer universal prekindergarten education, provide 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, expand anti-poverty tax credits, and create a new tax break for first-time home buyers. The plan also reiterates U.S. support for Ukraine, with a $61 billion request to send arms and assistance to fight off Russia’s invasion,” our colleague Jacob Bogage reports. 

Special counsel Robert Hur will appear before the House Judiciary Committee this morning. The hearing — about his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents — will be the first time Hur addresses the public since the release of his report last month. 

In the economy

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release fresh inflation data this morning.

From the courts

Trump’s Georgia case hangs on key decision of a relatively new judge

Our colleague Holly Bailey profiled Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, a newcomer to the bench who will decide sometime this week whether the Georgia criminal case implicating Trump should be thrown out or reassigned because of misconduct allegations against his former boss, District Attorney Fani Willis, that center on her sex life. Here’s an excerpt: 

“McAfee’s ruling is likely to be a career-defining moment for the 34-year-old rookie judge,” Holly writes. “His decision, whatever it is, will almost certainly be questioned by pundits and legal analysts because of its implications for Trump’s 2024 bid for the White House. And it is sure to draw political attacks — and probably harassment and threats — in an already contentious election year in which he, Willis and Trump will each be on the ballot.”

• “In a proceeding that seems almost tailored for high drama, McAfee has emerged in his own distinctive role — the youngest member of the Fulton County bench who has enjoyed a meteoric rise on the Georgia legal scene since he passed the bar a little over a decade ago. The mild-mannered judge has become quickly known for his calm, almost opaque demeanor in wrangling the sprawling case with its array of colorful defendants and lawyers with big, often clashing personalities that would test even the most experienced members of the judiciary.”
• Several friends, former colleagues and others who know McAfee but declined to be quoted by name “described a smart legal mind deeply knowledgeable about criminal law with a reputation for being hard-working, professional and extremely patient — a key attribute for any judge, they argue, much less someone overseeing a case as sprawling as the one involving Trump. He’s just as cool and collected away from the cameras, they said.”
• “But it is McAfee’s extracurricular activities that have drawn some suspicion among those anxious to see the Georgia case against Trump proceed. While in law school, McAfee was vice president of the local chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative law group, and treasurer for the Law Republicans. Speaking to the New Yorker, McAfee described his membership in the Federalist Society as a ‘networking opportunity’ and ‘not a cabal.’ But just as McAfee’s conservative bona fides have roused suspicion on the left, so have his previous ties to Willis among those on the right.”

The campaign

RNC fires dozens of employees after Trump-backed leadership takes over

The Republican National Committee’s new Trump-backed leadership team — Michael Whatley as chair, Lara Trump as co-chair and Chris LaCivita as chief of staff — has fired about 60 employees since taking over, three people familiar with the firings who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly told our colleagues Josh Dawsey and Patrick Svitek. 

• “One of the people familiar with the firings said data, political and communications staffers were affected, and notifications were made on Monday by LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser who was at the RNC’s Capitol Hill headquarters. LaCivita had complained about the staff of the RNC for several months, people who spoke to him said, and long planned to make changes. The Trump adviser had studied the organization’s payroll and employees for several weeks, the person said.”
• “LaCivita also told some contractors that they would not be renewed, and some of the ousters included employees who worked in the campaign’s state offices. Some staffers were described as shocked by the firings, which took place over the course of the day.”
• “The overhaul is aimed at cutting, what one of the people described as, ‘bureaucracy’ at the RNC,” per Politico’s Alex Isenstadt, who first reported the firings Monday. “But the move also underscores the swiftness with which Trump’s operation is moving to take over the Republican Party’s operations after the former president all but clinched the party’s presidential nomination last week.”

The Media

Must reads

From The Post: 

• House GOP report details testimony that contradicted key Jan. 6 witness. By Jacqueline Alemany.
• Trump seeks delay in N.Y. trial pending Supreme Court hearing on immunity. By Shayna Jacobs.
• Settlement in Florida ‘don’t say gay’ lawsuit says it’s okay to say gay. By Lori Rozsa.
• Gaza war may stoke ‘generational’ terrorism threat, top intel official says. By Shane Harris, Abigail Hauslohner and Ellen Nakashima.
• Biden effigy beaten, kicked at Kansas county GOP event, drawing outrage. By Annie Gowen.

From across the web: 

• House Republicans move ahead with TikTok vote even as Trump voices opposition to possible ban. By the Associated Press’s Jill Colvin and Kevin Freking.
• Biden’s advance team is rife with turmoil and toxicity, staff allege. By Politico’s Lauren Egan and Daniel Lippman.
• Markey staffers begin collective bargaining, a win for union organizers. By Roll Call’s Jim Saksa.

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